1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to a usage of a data retaining device, and more particularly, to a method and system for determining a relative amount of usage of a data retaining device based on a potential of a charge storing device coupled to the data retaining device.
2. Background Art
An amount of usage of a data retaining device needs to be determined for various applications. For example, a multi-port cache is usually limited in size so that if the cache is full, some of the ports/word lines of the cache need to be refreshed to make room for new items. A cache replacement algorithm is usually used to select word lines to refresh. Examples of cache replacement algorithms include a Least Recently Used (LRU) algorithm which refreshes the least recently used word line first, and a Least Frequently Used (LFU) algorithm which refreshes the least frequently used word line first. These algorithms require keeping track of usage of a word line of the cache, which is very costly under the present state of the art technology.
Based on the above, there is a need in the art for a solution to determine a usage of a data retaining device in an inexpensive/efficient way.